These are the current quesitons that I am very much wrestling with. I would appreciate any prayer, as these things are very much vexing me.
There appears to be a contradiction in affirming that: 1) the essence of the curse is penalty of loss and sense and that 2) Christ suffered the essence of the curse throughout His entire life, and likewise the reprobate currently suffer the essence of the curse in their life.
The reason is that punishment of loss is supposed to be infinite and so does not admit of degrees, but must include the total loss of all sense of the goodness of God and thus all happiness. And even if it did admit of degrees, then it’s hard to see why Christ had to suffer to such a degree if only the essence is necessary to be suffered.
This leads me to the following questions:
1. Are temporal punishments essentially the same as eternal punishment (I have only ever read the Reformed affirm that they are; for instance Witsius, Economy, Book II, Chap. VI, XIX)? If they are not and we say eternal punishment of loss requires total loss of a sense of the goodness of God, then what of question 2?
2. If the essence of the curse involves punishment of loss and sense, how can Christ be said to bear our sins throughout His life when it seems He only experienced loss on the cross?
3. If the answer given to 2 is that He suffered loss throughout his life in some lower degrees by which He was deprived of full joy and a full sense of God’s goodness, John Norton says: “The essential punishment of the curse, is the total temporal privation of all the sense of the good of the promise, called by some, The pain of loss”. And the Synopsis says “they are deprived of all happiness—which they call the punishment of damnation”. If the pain of loss somehow admits of degrees, how can this be seeing that it is infinite (see Ames here https://archive.org/details/marrowoftheology0000ames_j0t7/page/124/mode/2up?view=theater and Thomas here https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2087.htm#article4)? And if it does somehow admits of degrees but only the essence is necessary to be suffered as Owen argues (and as all Reformed would agree, seeing as degree is accidental), why not just have Christ suffer the essence to the lowest possible degree?
4. If the answer given to 2 is that it isn’t necessary that loss and sense be suffered at one and the same time for one to bear the curse, then God could suspend sense or loss in Hell for 500 years and they would still be bearing the curse. Yet this seems incredulous.
5. Finally, if the essence of the curse involves loss and sense, then how can we hold that the death of unbelievers fits this if, as Thomas points out at reply 7 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3164.htm death has no penalty of sense if we mean the separation of the soul from the body; but if we mean the process of dying, then it has no penalty of loss. Likewise would the moment of Christ’s physical death (the separation of soul from body) not be properly satisfactory (Norton seems to imply this when he says “Christ suffered the essentiall poenall wrath of God, which answers the suffering of the second death due to the elect for their sin, before he suffered his naturall death.”)?
Answers:
Temporal punishments essentially same as eternal. Difference between the elect's chastisements and the reprobates punishments is in form and can be seen from the ends (final cause).
Loss and sense are of the essence, yes, but proportionality determines loss must (eventually) be total insofar as sin agaisnt God who is all good requires the loss of all good. Though it seems this must only be understood of God's ordained power under Rutherford and Norton's view.
Loss can be experienced in degree since it is infinite with respect to object, not necessarily always with respect to experience (you can loose some degree of happiness)
It seems loss and sense do not have to be together at the same time (although it does seem that some degree of the other is entailed by any one). But Norton may be correct that strictly speaking Christ's atonement ends prior to his physical death ("it is finished"). We must remember that it is not physical death which must be imputed to us since it is not of the essence of the curse, but spiritual death via loss/sense and so it is at least possible that Norton's view is correct.
Other notes:
The degree to which pain of sense is suffered in Hell follows a fitting and just proportion.
It seems the degree to which Christ suffered on earth via pain of sense holds some proportionality to the highest degree the elect would suffer (that is to say were He to have died only for an infant versus only for a murderer, the pain of sense would have been less to account for a fitting and just proportion). This is, however, very speculative. Norton at least seems to imply something like this with “Christ having suffered the punishment due in kinde and degree to the greatest sinner…The punishment for kinde and degree due unto the greatest sinner being suffered by an infinite person…” https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A89737.0001.001/1:5.14?rgn=div2;view=fulltext
Finite man cannot satisfy for sin because it is an infinite offense agaisnt God and thus he does not provide proportional value.
Simple satisfaction (that is, without penalty) would be insufficient since the essence of the penalty of the law is also demanded to be suffered and God has ordained not to do away with the penalty of the law.
Under Rutherford/Norton's view (to which I hold), every above note must be understood in terms of God's ordained power, not His absolute power. Man in covenant with God could offer satisfaction absolutely speaking, even apart from suffering since this involves no contradiction.
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